HOT POOP: 2010 LAMINATED LIST # 4

I really like William T Vollmann. I've read four of his books so far, books about prostitutes and drugs and murder and war and death and am right on the verge of diving into his Seven Dreams cycle of novels about the clash of Native Americans and European explorers and missionaries across North America, from Virginia to the Pacific Northwest, and up to the polar north. A heady, post-modern collage of fiction, history, journalism, mythology, fairy tales and legends. Vollmann has written four of the proposed seven volumes so far, and now seems like as good a time as any to get going. 4 volumes, 2500+ pages.

And counting...

Yeah, most of Vollmann's books are loooooong. He emerged on the literary scene at the age of 30 with his 700 page debut novel, You Bright And Risen Angels in 1987, and in the 23 years since, he's written another 16 books, including the seven-volume, 3352 (!!!!!) page treatise about violence, Rising Up And Rising Down, in 2003.

Two years later in 2005, Vollmann published Europe Central, an 832 page National Book Award winner. Like so many of his books, Europe Central is a "sweeping" and "epic" story which brilliantly fuses fictions with history. In this instance, generations of countless characters living out their lives from Germany to Russia throughout the 20th century, against the backdrop of two world wars, the holocaust, fascism, communism, a cold war, and beyond...

Even if I happen to read my way through the entirety of the Seven Dreams cycle, which I admit is a long shot because I've also got a couple Stanislaw Lem books sitting here on the coffee table, and they're calling to me... "Polish sci-fi, Mohaski! You Polack!"

Anyways, I don't have the jam for Europe Central, even if I have the long-range Vollmann focus. Might as well laminate it.

That reminds me - Alison Brie plays the smart/cute/perky/uptight/annoying community college coed on, Annie Edison on the NBC sitcom Community. On that show she usually wears the kind of tight, colorful sweaters you might expect from a geeky rah-rah type who's never read Vollmann and has no idea who the fuck I am.